Light in August in Never too Late to Read Classics

May 27, 2013 Chrissie rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: usa, 2014-read, audible-us, race, southern, hf, classics

The most obvious reason why one would choose to read this book is the magnificent way in which it evokes the atmosphere of the South in the 1920s. The hatred and distrust between the races was all pervasive. Such despair! To say the book is about racial discrimination is like saying a "painting is pretty" ……..and leaving it at that. It is the emotional response that Faulkner’s words evoke in the reader that is so exceptional.

Faulkner's sentences usually say more than the bare words; think prose ...more

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Aug 05, 2022 Kelly_Hunsaker_reads ... rated it it was amazing

Shelves: classics, 60-before-60, american-lit, read-in-2022, race, racism

William Faulkner always moves me to tears. His has the ability to create vivid, real, believable characters living lives that inspire my compassion. I suffer alongside the people in his novels. I cry over their pain. I feel claustrophobic when they do, and fearful when they do. I find myself growing and changing each time I read one of his stories.

Light in August is set in the fictional town of Jefferson during Prohibition. This is a story like that of Oedipus, and in it one of the main characte ...more

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Oct 01, 2011 Susan rated it it was amazing

classic Faulkner and a superb tale and character study -
"guileless,dauntless Lena Grove,in search of the father of her unborn child;Reverand Gail Hightower ,plauged by visions of Confederate horsemen; and Joe Christmas, a deperate enigmatic drifter consumed by his mixed ancestry" amid others in the post reconstruction South.Of course the Faulkner prose " Though the mules plod in a steady and unflagging hypnosis, the vehicle does not seem to progress. It seems to hang suspended in the middle dis ...more

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Aug 03, 2011 Linda rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: book-group

"Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders."

This is such an important book. And Faulkner is such a fine writer, whose work must have been ground breaking in its time. The writing has a very contemporary feel with unusual phrasing, streams of consciousness, time shifts, new words the author created by combining two or three other words, and impeccable use of dialect that is neither condescending or artificial.

It is difficult to und ...more

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